CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was after ten o’clock at night when we got back to the Soo. I dropped Maven off at the state post so he could pick up his car. He told me he’d be going over to the Ojibway to find the agents before they went to bed. He had to tell them this one small thing he had figured out, this glimpse into the past. No matter how late it was, he would not be able to sleep until he told them.
I wasn’t sure if he’d tell them the exact spot he was standing when he had his little epiphany. But what the hell, maybe he would.
I didn’t think I could sleep either. It felt like I was missing some essential part of the story, something that I should have seen already, but I couldn’t even begin to figure out what that might be.
There was only one person to talk to. So instead of heading back home, I went to the other side of town. To the movies.
The parking lot was jammed. On a frozen Friday night in Sault Ste. Marie, it was either the movies or a bar. I went inside and saw Leon scooping a tub-sized bucket of popcorn and then squirting what looked like yellow motor oil on top of it. He gave the bucket to a couple of teenagers and they gave him money in return. Then he went on to the next customer. I sat down at one of the little tables and waited. Before long, the customers all disappeared and the lobby was quiet.
“Alex!” Leon said, finally noticing me.
“You got a minute?”
“Yeah, why not?”
He came out to the table. He winced as he sat down and leaned forward to stretch out his back.
“Too much standing in this job,” he said.
“Leon, I don’t want to keep bothering you every time I get stuck on something.”
“You’re not bothering me. You know I love this stuff.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I didn’t want to go down that road again, so instead I just launched into my full update. All of the things we had learned since the last time I had spoken with him. Going out to Iron Mountain to talk to Mrs. Steele, finding her husband and his girlfriend both dead in her house in Wisconsin. Then finding out about Haggerty’s daughter and that cheerful little trip out to talk to him. The troopers watching his driveway around the clock. Then this whole new information dump from the state police records, leading right up to Maven’s almost-breakthrough that very evening.
“We just can’t find that one link,” I said. “That one person who crossed paths with all four of them.”
“I think you’re drowning in the details, Alex. You’re not the one who’s gonna find it, remember. Maven’s the one with the memories, and the FBI agents have all the raw data.”
“So I’m useless. Yeah, thanks, I feel better now.”
“You’re the neutral party here,” he said. “You’re the one who can sorta stand above everything and see it all from a thousand feet.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Think about it. Do your own little profile here.”
“That sounds like something the FBI would do.”
“It’s all common sense, Alex. Just think, okay? Think like him, whoever’s doing this. Why are you doing all this?”
“Well, let’s see…”
“Think, but don’t overthink. Just say the first thing that comes to you. Right from the gut. That’s usually pretty close to the truth. Why are you committing these crimes against these people?”
“Revenge.”
“Okay. For what?”
“For what they did to me.”
“What did they do?”
I hesitated. “They arrested me. They took me away.”
“Why are you killing their children first?”
“Because I want them to suffer before they die.”
“So you really must hate them.”
“Yes.”
“So why are you making these deaths look like suicides?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t. At first, I thought it was because that would make it worse somehow. But if I just took them away and then killed them-”
I stopped.
“What is it?” he said.
“Because it happened to me. That’s why I’m doing this, Leon. Because the exact same thing happened to me.”
His eyes lit up. “That’s good. Because you suffered the same loss. So put it all together now. What’s the whole story?”
“I was arrested and put in prison. My son killed himself. Or my daughter. While I was in prison.”
“Is that really enough of a reason?”
“They died alone, from their own hand. They killed themselves while I was rotting away in a concrete box.”
“So now you’re having your revenge,” he said. “All these years later, right? Why have you waited so long?”
“Because I just got out of prison.”
“Maybe.” I could see Leon thinking that one over. “Or there might be some other reason why now is the right time.”
“Yeah, maybe I had other reasons to wait. Other things in my life that I didn’t want to lose. But maybe now there’s nothing stopping me.”
“Exactly. So how old are you?”
“Well, if I was arrested what, like ten, eleven years ago…”
“And you already had a son or daughter at the time.”
“I’m guessing this suicide probably happened fairly close to the time of the arrest,” I said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t necessarily connect the two in your mind.”
“Okay, so your son or daughter must be of age already. Old enough to commit suicide, anyway.”
“If you add it all up, you’re talking about somebody who’s at least in his midforties?”
“Or older, right.”
“But hold on.” I flashed back to what Maven and I had already talked about. “We’re talking about taking my revenge against the cops who arrested me. What about the judge and the DA and hell, for that matter, even the defense attorney who obviously didn’t defend me too well?”
“From everything you’ve seen, would you say this guy is smart?”
“Smart, yes. Ingenious even, if you think about what he did to Haggerty’s daughter with that bag full of helium.”
“Would you call him methodical? Is that a word you’d use?”
I thought about it. “Yes. Methodical.”
“So who’s to say those other people, the judge and the DA and the defense attorney, aren’t further down on the list?”
“What, are you saying…”
“He’s starting at the beginning. And the beginning is what?”
“The cops who arrested him.”
